Only the Lonely

The eagerly anticipated Nicholas Ray retrospective at Film Forum starts today with a weeklong run of “In a Lonely Place,” which is perhaps the most vulnerable and self-revealing love story ever filmed in Hollywood. (For what it’s worth, a decade ago, I listed it among the top twenty films of all time, and I still feel the same way.) It’s available on DVD; many of his best movies are not—such as “Bigger Than Life” (which made a big splash when Film Forumrevived it last year), “The Lusty Men,” and, shockingly, “Johnny Guitar.” In the magazine this week, I write about the long-unavailable “Party Girl,” a gangland-Chicago romance between a dancer and a Mob lawyer, which has recently been made available on demand by Warner Archive. I first saw it in Paris seven or eight years ago, where it was playing in regular run at a Latin Quarter theatre; the line was around the block. (An added fillip of interest for jazz buffs: taped to the glass of the ticket booth was a little card advertising drum lessons. The teacher was none other than Sunny Murray, who, in his collaborations with Cecil Taylor nearly a half-century ago, invented the art of free-jazz drumming.)

The league, we’ve been told for the past year, is desperate to stay out of politics. But it’s clear that some constituents are judged to be more important, more valuable, than others.

Although the N.F.L. has long banned substances such as anabolic steroids and growth hormones, the First Amendment is believed to be the only right guaranteed by the Constitution to be included on the list.